Atheist Blogger- the godlessvagina / Podcaster the pink atheist

Monthly Archives: August 2013

Let me open by stipulating that I really think it is the pedantic notion of insulting, and verbally assaulting someone which inspires the use of the term privilege. Like aggressively silencing someone because they are not the right color, or gender, or race to address any situation. It is the dismissal of education, intellectual value, hard work and dedication to unity which drives the bitter vitriol into people.

As of late there is a seething band of people in the atheist community who think throwing out the privilege card means you win. Like a triumph card. So let me enlighten you, that not only is this false, but it clearly states you feeling of inferiority, and abusive nature.

Don’t think I have the intention of spending the rest of my days responding to assaults on this blog, because I am sure they will just confirm what I am stating here, and in reality, and in light of my education on this topic, I am not interested to argue with you.

Privilege is thrown at men in droves. A white cis male, he can’t talk about race issues. Are you sure? What if he has spent his life in the ghetto, or has a degree in minority studies, or has helped in the cause of gaining rights for minorities and seen the suffering?

Since when did being white and straight make you anything? Are you privy to his private life? Do you know about his circumstances, education, friends, and activism? If not aren’t you just using your ignorance to say he is ignorant?

Does everyone have privilege? According to the way people are throwing around the terminology, yes. White and straight, and male. White and straight. Upper class, lower class, middle class. Oh the privilege. But just if you are white, and straight, and especially if you are male?

Let me just bring the reality check in here. You don’t know what you are talking about, and you look like it when you talk.

Most lower class white straight males at best have a few friends. Social friends. The don’t have access to the resources to have any power. They go to their jobs where they work 8, 10, 12, 16 hours a day to provide for their families. They work alongside minorities who are doing the same. They make enough money for a home, car, and food. The amount of privilege society offers them is nothing. They get speeding tickets, pay high taxes, don’t have big savings accounts, don’t rub elbows with rich men, aren’t of substantial value to their work place so that they can do what they please, and society notes they exist and could care less.

Since I have known lesbians, and homosexual males, in that lower class, the same goes for them. They generally live a life the same way. Most people don’t treat them too differently, except bigots. And then it is not about privilege, it is about bigotry. They get treated equal to the other minorities, by bigots. But for the majority of the time, they just live the same non privileged life.

Just because you are white and straight and male in America doesn’t mean anything, other than there are less bigots waiting to abuse you. And since when is the lack of abuse a privilege? So we are equating abusive behaviors with non privilege, and not putting them were they belong?

Are we really saying, you haven’t been abused enough by society and life, so you must have some magical privilege? So then I guess you don’t care if he was a straight white male who was systematically abused at home?

Since when is not having something happen to you a privilege? Now it is about grading by levels of suffering? How do you know how much someone else has suffered? Because you are racially and sexually profiling? Because you are bigot minded against white males? Especially straight white males.

In our society the advantages and privileges come in in certain areas. Upper class, money, stardom, fame, fortune, and connections. That is where privilege really lives.

I was privy to note this as a teenager. In my social world those who had homes and social ties to the mayor and the police and knew people who could keep them out of trouble did get a degree of privilege. But it was proportional to a lot of dynamics. But that was a small town, where everyone knew everyone and everything you did.

Go to the city where anonymity lives and no one cares who you are. You have to make an effort to rub elbows with the right people. That goes by class, and social standing, and education and most of all money.

To point at someone and say they have a privilege you know nothing about is absurd. It shows how damn clueless you are and how you demand to be given something based upon the idea that you are missing out on something you may ultimately want no part of.

Really, you want to be the one treating others like shit, and calling the shots. You want to be the one using your privilege to shout others down. and use bigotry. Because that seems to be what you are saying. “Give me power, because you have had it all this time, and don’t expect me to earn it, because I said so.”

Look at people like Obama, Oprah, 50cent, Look at people who are minorities and doctors, surgeons, pilots, firemen. Look at all the people who are busy making their way to the top, and not whining about privilege. What you are really saying is that you think society owes you something because you think you were kept from anything you want.

I don’t think society owes you anything you are not willing to fight for. And it is not in the name calling arena. It is in offices, and court battles, and the streets and protests and in hard work and rising above. It is not in the silencing of those who are your alis’. But then I saw about when a person is your Ali, and they are right up to the point they disagree with you one tiny bit and then fuck them, they are the enemy. Because people should not dare disagree with you, you are the victim, the eternal victim.

Atheists are all not privileged, so that means somewhere, somehow even those white straight guys get to face it. You know like when they are fired for being atheists, or when they are treated like dirt by family and former friends, but I bet you don’t care about that.

The most oppressed group among all of us is the black female lesbian atheist, if you are not her, then you have more privilege than her, and from there it goes up, so all of you have some privilege above her. Maybe it is time to start calling you on your white straight female privilege, or even your white gay female privilege because you have more than her. Why don’t we all just break down into a bunch of whiny childish self interested, self absorbed victims who constantly point fingers so nothing gets done but victimizing other people and abusing them, because until now, we feel they have not properly been abused, and should suffer, because misery loves company and the only way they can understand us is to suffer…who is up for mental slavery?

Or how about stop using the terminology in ways which demean us all. I am part Cherokee, German, Irish, and Mohawk. So go for trying to tell me where my privilege is. Tell me how wrong I am, and try to make it sound like I have no clue. But I will never forget my dad telling me what his friend said. “I hate those interracial couples and their halfbreed kids.” Yet I don’t feel like any kind of victim, because those words mean nothing, my skin means nothing. My intellect and strength mean everything and in a world where no one plays fair, I am not going to wait around pointing fingers to get my way. I will make it without dragging anyone down. And I will succeed because I am a winner and not because I used weak ass terms like privilege.

Privilege is getting things you didn’t earn and don’t deserve, based upon your social status, wealth and education.(And in cases lack there of, see Paris Hilton) Do not confound that with racism, sexism and bigotry against other sexualities.

Many atheists come from religious backgrounds, though there are a few amongst us that don’t (lucky people). While we would all like to believe that society has not had profound effects on our thoughts about who we are as human beings, and sexual beings, it doesn’t make it true. Society has a way of sending both obvious and subliminal messages.

I am here to help you get a closer perspective on who you are as a sexual being, break some of the stereo types playing in your heads, and give you the ability, to give yourself permission to be the sexual being you choose yourself to be.

From the time you were a small child you began to look at the world, and yourself, as whom you were taught by your parents, society, and our culture. Many women were socialized a specific way, with the virgin/ whore dichotomy, while men were socialized different. They were taught to be sexual, and virile. We are going to address those differences, and ask all the important questions again.

Who are you as a sexual being? Science has a lot to say about the history of sex among human beings. We were not monogamous sexually, many of those biological adaptations for non-monogamous sex have survived into modern day, mainly because they never stopped being true. People did not become monogamous at the point of agricultural development, nor are they today. Yet our society perpetuates the myth of monogamy.

Now, that doesn’t mean that all of us are non-monogamous, that does not mean we can’t choose monogamy. It means that the default setting on human behavior is to have many partners, to find sex exciting, and to enjoy sex.

Society, however, has been tampering with nature for close to 12,000 years. Women have been taught that they are supposed to be virginal, monogamous, dull, quiet sexual creatures. While men are taught that they are conquers of women, and the more women they sleep with, the more sexually vibrant, attractive, and healthy males they are. This is within the second myth of sex in society. The myth of heterosexuality being the default position in human sexuality. We will come back to that myth shortly.

For women the two dichotomies given to us by the Abrahamic religions are the virgin, and the whore. Meanwhile males are immune to this impunement of their sexual being, as long as they don’t violate the second myth.

Now, to address what the primary myth does to women, and society, especially our society. It has a lot of lingering effects we often don’t like to admit as atheists. Leaving religion does not mean we instantly leave the guilt and shame that were placed on us from our primary teachers. When it comes to religion, I have heard it reiterated again and again that Christians are far more sexual than we say. Those catholic girls are easy, and wild. That lasts for a short time, and any man who has been with a religious woman long enough knows full well the guilt finally catches up. Some women never make it too far before the guilt is there. Women are taught to be guilty for their needs, guilty for their desires, and guilty about their bodies, from birth.

The primary myth places a heavy burden on women, one that blames them for not only their behavior but that of men as well. How many of us were told that it is our beauty that makes men weak. How many of us were taught to cover our bodies, that certain clothes would make us look trashy, easy, or slutty. When it comes to how we should be seen, we need look no further than every princess story ever told. It shows a girl too beautiful to be resisted, jealousy by other women, and ultimately, what the man wants is a virginal beauty that he can possess and own.

How many times have you heard men say, “She’s not the kind of girl you take home to your mother?” Words like easy, whore, slut, tramp, harlot, skank, are part of our society. Even the reference to a female breeding dog, or Bitch are words used to describe women who refuse to conform to societies standards of virginal womanhood.

In the stories of our society, our minds, women must always use caution, present themselves as a chaste and not be looked upon for their sexual proclivity. Women are to be the ever clean virgin mothers. Sperm makes them dirty, and the more sperm and males they have been around, the less value they have as wives and mothers of our children. We must change the course of our own thinking.

Every sex education class in America teaches that when you sleep with someone, you are sleeping with everyone they slept with. While this could be true, if they have not used caution and had protected sex, why is it a bad thing in any other form? Is having a partner who can fulfill your fantasies, needs, and wants a bad thing?

What if having many partners was a good thing, and we only benefitted from healthy sex. What if we could pick and choose a different partner ever night? What if society placed no heavy handed burden on us to conform and we were sexually liberated, people weren’t possessions?

Is it so far removed from the truth to see this? Why can’t you sleep with anyone you want? Now I know there are boundaries people don’t want crossed, that would be cheating. But why do we have this notion we own our partners sex life? Why do we feel we get to say that they must conform? While this goes for men and women, we are taught in youth never to question the sexual history of a male, while he is taught to question ours.

We only have to turn back and look at religion to see why we are so sexually repressed.

The Sterilization of history

History is trying to be rewritten by a bunch of sterile minded Christians who want to label the past as archaic, out of sorts, ungodly. The reality is something we should pay attention to. There was every type of sex in history, including ones that would land you in prison today. In the time of Plato many men had their boy lovers; in the time of the Roman’s and Egyptians orgies took place in the palaces. Sometimes the orgies lasted for days. Some of the most notorious historical figures, Cleopatra and Mark Antony, who carried on a love affair, often held orgies. Caligula, the once Emperor of Rome was said to have such a twisted mind that he tortured people to death with sex. Engaged in coitis with his sister, his horse, and forced the senators to prostitute their wives.

Historically, sex had less and less limitations going backward. It was the onslaught of Abrahamic religions which altered the future of man and his sexual proclivity. Even in ancient Egypt sex was not important. Early history of mankind show sex was not hidden. In Africa many tribes had sex in the open. Native Americans held sex to be a vital part of life. Romans had prostitutes, as well as the Greek. Sex was everywhere in history. In Europe where Neanderthal’s lived in caves, there was no form of privacy. The history of mankind was sex in the open, a natural part of life. The religious in America would have you believe that history was painted with virginity, which is not the case.

One of the greatest myths that have been recently debunked was the puritans were a very religious group of people. They were not proud or promiscuous, that they held morality high, and followed the bible. Perfume bottles found on the sight of the first colonies, and historical records have changed what we thought we knew about them. They had premarital sex, and when pregnancy resulted, the girl would be asked during labor who the father was. This was done because during pain, the girl was less likely to lie, and the two would be married after. Humans have not deviated from their original nature, nor will they. Our social sexual nature comes through. As much as we need to interact with one another to bond as a society, is as much as we need to interact socially. Why is sex not just seen as another social behavior?

This brings me to the next myth. The myth of heterosexuality being the default position of human sexual behavior. .

The Myth of Heterosexuality

We are raised in a society where people are ignorant to the facts of sexuality, but one of the worst offenses is the perpetuation of heterosexuality being the normal, and all other deviations from this norm being abnormal, and choices, and sick, part of mental illness, and evil. The reality is something they want to keep most people from knowing. Since the time of the Kama Sutra, an Indian book not only on sex, but the expectations of sexual behavior on the part of men and women, man has noted homosexuality. Hinduism is one of the world’s oldest recorded religions. It gave arise to the Kama sutra. In the book it explicitly talks about male on male sex. That a master may engage in sex with his slaves, male or female at will. In fact there was nothing abnormal seen in this action. Native Americans had a name for homosexuals, they were the warriors of two spirits, and held as sacred. In Greece, Athens, Egypt, and around the globe homosexuality arose in every part of the world. The difference was, before Abrahamic religions, the practice was looked upon as something that just was. Not something to be called into question.

Science has since found that heterosexual behavior is not as cut and dry as once thought. Many young men in boarding schools, like Christopher Hitchens have engaged in various forms of mutual masturbation, oral sex, or even anal sex.

Many women in their college years have had lesbian experiences. While society tries to pretend that we are not exploring sex every chance we get, millions of people are.

The reality exists that there are bi-sexual males and females that having blurred sexual boundaries is highly predominant, and those who are strictly heterosexual are the rare among us. Humans enjoy sex, and if they were at liberty to explore all sexual options, without fear of reprisal or judgment, they would likely try homosexuality once or twice, and might incorporate those acts into their general sexual behavior.

One thing that religion has done well is create a hostile myth against sexual exploration. It has vilified those who are gay, or sexual in any form that is not strictly hetero, and mundane.

The reality exists that touch is pleasurable, that we don’t care as much about who is making us feel good, as long as it feels good and we enjoy it. While there needs to be attraction to stimulate the primary response, when left to entertain our desires freely, human beings will try almost anything, except for the limited few.

Homosexuality, whether by birth, by choice, or by brain function, is not a crime, a sin, dirty, wrong, or in any form abnormal. It is simply another expression of love, a form of sex, and bonding.

The Freedom to be you

There is no label to put on you, no one can tell you who you should be. Each of us is as different from the next one beside us. While many of us have similar thoughts and desires, the reality is that we don’t all want the same thing. Especially when it comes to sex.

There are many types of sexuality and sexual individuals. From sapiosexual, to, polysexual, pansexual, and even asexual, homosexual, heterosexual, transsexual, and transgender. There are different sexual styles Polyandry, polygamy, monogamy, threesomes, orgies, gang bangs, SMBD. Sex does not come prepackaged, and you don’t know what you really are looking for until you explore. And sexual exploration can be adventurous.

It is not permission for the external world you really need, it is permission form yourself. We have to be willing to take charge, ask questions, explore, and make sex part of our lives. An important part of our lives.

Understanding your Sex

Most people think sex and love are exclusive. They are also living under the delusion that they have perfect communication, and that their partner would never cheat.

Recently when I asked atheist questions about their sex, their lives, and their needs, these were the answers I saw the most.

How important is communication? : Most people said it is very important, while some answers were quite startling. I will come back to that.

Is it ever okay to withhold sex to hurt someone? Most people said no. But a majority of men said it had been done to them.

I asked if people would end the relationship if someone cheated on them. The majority said yes. This is where the tricky part comes in.

Most people believe they have been communicating openly with their partner, but the results on cheating; open communication and rejection of sex, along with alienation are high among those who answered.

This fits well with what we know is going on in society.

The fact is, people often love their partner, and their partner has said they are not open to certain things, so people cheat. Monogamy is not the spice of life, and it is rare that people can continue to suffer when their needs are not met. One of the biggest culprits is alienation of affection. When people don’t feel loved at home, or that their sexual needs are not being met, they will find a way to meet those needs.

While our community is skeptical of many things, we have to stop and be skeptical about our sex. When it comes to sexual fulfillment, we aren’t yet rising above the curve. Atheists are just as hurt, rejected, and alienated about their sexual health as any group. While we want to believe that it is not us being cheated on, or living in a loveless romance, many times it is.

Loving yourself

You might think that no one needs to tell you how to have sex, what you need, or what is best for you, but this is your one life, and everything you do, you ultimately are heading towards that Barn door Hitchens spoke of. So the love you make, counts. We should be one of the most uninhibited groups of sexual people. While safe sex is always important, the stereotypes given to us by society about our bodies need to be shed. No one should care what you do with your body and the sex you choose. If they do, then make it their problem, and don’t let it become yours.

Many people walk the world believing that sex is an easy topic, that it is simple. You find someone, have some orgasms, maybe fall in love, and then life will be bliss. This is not true for many people. From problems with honesty in what we need to negative self-images, to the fact that life gets in the way, we are not having the sex we need, want or desire desperately.

We over complicate, over think, shame, blame and deny what our sex could be. Our society has put a heavy burden on sex. Attaching to it archaic religious notions backed up by only hearsay and conjecture. Right now, millions of little children are being taught about their bodies in horrible, negative, and demeaning ways.

It has led to teen suicide, sex abuse, and deviant behaviors among the most religious. We have to rise above that. Our community needs to be sex positive. We need to accept sexuality as it is, and not try to define it for each other. There should be no slut shaming, no taboo when it comes to sex. We should be free to explore all options.

If it is selfish to want your sexual needs met, then be selfish. I don’t condone cheating, but I understand why it happens. When a partner is unwilling to listen, it can be hurtful. Their reasons can be good ones. No one wants to feel unwanted, by their partner. No one wants to feel like they are not exciting. We don’t want to be rejected or told we no longer are irresistible in bed. Men and women who catch their spouse cheating don’t realize, while they are not to blame directly, they may have set the stage for it to happen. When we define another person’s sex, refuse to hear about their needs or desires, withhold emotion and forget to be a sexual being there are consequences. Many people won’t leave toxic relationships because of the children. When they ask me about it, I often say, the fact you are willing to remain sexually unhappy, means you are setting your children up to be sexually unhappy.

Realistically we may not be all our partners need, or want. Sometimes we find that we need something more. We find that we need pleasure beyond what we have. We have a duty to our partners. With that comes the duty to reciprocate sexual favors and pleasure. Incorporating toys, other people, other forms of sex, or just going to get what you need may be the answer.

After tonight do some real introspection about your sex life. The history of your sex, and see who has been deciding for you. Look deeper into what you need and want, and try to start the conversation.

Men and women are different, but not when it comes to sex. Just because women produce one egg per month does not make them more monogamous than men. It means that how we express it is different. Men tend to be more sexual, and need it more often than women. Women are often the ones stuck with the majority of chores in the home as well as a job. We neglect vital parts of our lives, until life becomes unbearable. We forget to take care of something that was once very important to us, and that is love.

Love has become a vital part of our lives, not only in the form of pair bonding, but in having a constant mate. Exploring sex may not mean giving up what you have, but exploring outside of it, or with your partner.

During the preliminary part of the love experience people go through pair bonding, a chemical high brought on by the brain. They then enter into the honeymoon phase where sex is abundant. But after a while the chemicals wear off and suddenly the dynamics change.

You are beautiful and sexual

Being an atheist means you can have hot sloppy, guilt free, orgasmic sex. It means that there should be no conditions put on you that you don’t accept. We are god free, but not yet guilt free when it comes to sex. Sometimes there is still a third person or fourth person in bed with us, our conscious. We feel like people won’t like us, or accept us. That we will be shunned by family and friends for the sex we are having. But ask yourself, why are they worried?

A body is a terrible thing to waste worrying what others think of you. You are probably not a super model, and will never be. Maybe your nose is a little funny, or you have more curves than you want. Perhaps nature didn’t give you everything you long for, but you are beautiful. And the good news is if you look hard enough, you can find someone who enjoys you as much as you need to be.

But don’t limit yourself to one partner, if it is not your sincere choice. Don’t cage your sexual expression. Never let someone else define you sexually. Stop being a stereotype, and forgive people for their needs. Teach your children to accept people of different sexual and life choices. It is time to put the burden back on the religious to prove that there is anything wrong with what people are doing. We need to work on a few things in our community, the first being cheating. It is a problem, because it means we are still not listening, and hearing what our partners need. The second thing is not withholding sex because you are angry and unwilling to let go of an issue. There is a limit of time that you should be hurt. If your pain and anger surpass that, then perhaps it is time for counseling. Otherwise what you are doing by purposely withholding sex is akin to emotional abuse. The third thing we need to do is let ourselves be sexual. If you are afraid, why are you afraid? If you don’t trust your partner, why don’t you trust them?

Why should you not be having explosive orgasms every night, or almost every night? I can’t believe that it is not high on your to do list. People who are sexually happy live longer, function better, have better relationships, and overall enjoy their lives.

Now go out and orgasm, and let it multiply…..here is to hoping you get all the kinky sex you ever hoped for.

In the grand scheme of things, your mind is as unique as your finger
prints or your retina. No person has been like you or will ever be as
exact as you. You are a special data bank of thought and information
collected over your lifetime to the point where you read this, and then
forever after.

Have you ever stopped to think of the
most unique events of your life, or even the ones which seem mundane and
far from extraordinary? These events shaped the way you think, your
neural responses, your patterns. Every one of them can trigger a
preconceived action. You are at this point in time, all of your prior
patterns. Those are broken when new information enters, and a new neural
link is made.

Many people will go a lifetime and make a
minimal amount of re-linkings, some people will constantly create new
information and links. Memories are accessed all the time in our minds,
sometimes changing and adding new information to them, but it doesn’t
change large portions of our brain, neural, structure. The neurons can
create new links at any time.

The problem we face in
society is we are working with many dimensions of the mind. Not just
the patterns, but the outcome of the patterns, and biology of the brain.
When we try and convince people they have done something wrong, they
sometimes don’t see or accept why it was wrong.

A mind
pre conditioned into a pattern can be changed, but through work with the
existing ones, replacing, revisiting and changing memories, which can’t
be trusted. Memories are flawed, but they create a person who is
individual because of the pattern that they created.

People
who don’t obey social laws and constructs, or mores, have often been
conditioned mentally to not obey them, to hold them as suspect, or
believe themselves above the law. In some cases the person has emotional
or mental, even physical trauma behind the creation of these patterns.

Once
a person has broken some of the more extreme social laws, such as
murder, they can’t be trusted to follow them again. It is hard to
convince a person who has taken a life, in many instances, that they did
something very wrong. Over time they may or may not come to accept
that. It varies, mostly by the situation. Though prison has the ability
to reinforce negative patterns, and the breaking of social laws.

Each
of us though, is an amalgum, of memories, and patterns, strewn throught
the brain stored in the neurons, each of us have lived different lives,
seen things from personal perspectives. Even those who go through many
of the same things, still will have variables, experiences which are
different from every perspective, and build upon prior experiences. Even
one variable is enough to alter a pattern, which, often times there are
many dynamics. Things the person saw, thinks they saw, can alter their
perception.

There are seven billion versions of this
world, how it functions, the patterns and establisment of boundaries.
Seven billion ways of seeing the world, but you can only see it from
yours. While you can empathize with others on their experiences, and
patterns, you realize that you can’t take on another persons
perspective, and even your perspective can just be what you have created
in your mind.

Our reality is as real as we make it, we
define ourselves over and over. Our minds seek our comforting patterns,
and we remain individuals. Though we can be made to believe things
which alter our outlook on life, we have a personality based on the
patterns which first formed us. Things which we don’t think about. Why
do we laugh at certain jokes, become offended, cry, feel sad, happy,
love a certain way?

We are programmed by birth to mock
the behaviors of those teaching us, yet we will inevitably become
unique. Sometimes having to go back and reprogram the core programs and
patterns set by the primary care takers in our lives. The mind being a
highly complex diverse organization of neural connections. From those
primary care takers and our first years we begin to develop a sense of
self and self awareness. After that period of time we continue making
secondary connections based upon our primary development. Interactions
we have with other humans alter and define ultimately who we think we
are. Based upon that is our social, romantic, and emotional behaviors.

Often
times we need help externally based to sort through the memories, and
help to alter them. People can be as much a victim of their neural
patterns as they are a product of them. This is why society is such a
hard and dynamic structure, yet one worth the effort and time. In all of
our realities, there is no one reality which is more real than the
others. Yet today when you look out from your eyes, all you will see is
your own reality reflecting back at you, but you at least know that your
reality only exists inside of your mind.